‘Why no Marathi dub for Ramayana?’

A political and cult-ural brouhaha has erupted in Maharashtra over the exclusion of a Marathi-dubbed version for Nitesh Tiwari’s film Ramayana: Part 1. Despite the Ranbir Kapoor, Sai Pallavi, and Yash-starrer and promoting a massive multi-language rollout, Marathi was left out of its domestic theatrical lineup.

The trigger

While Ramayana released domestically in five Indian languages—Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, and Malayalam—and advertised dubs in nearly 40 languages globally, Marathi was omitted from the list. Babasaheb Patil, state president of the Nationalist Congress Party’s (NCP) Film and Cultural Department, formally wrote to producer Namit Malhotra questioning the exclusion, as detailed in a report by NDTV Profit.

The Core Argument: Patil emphasised that Maharashtra is one of India’s largest theatrical markets and that Marathi—which holds Classical Language status and a 1,000-year literary history—deserves equal respect and representation. The NCP cultural wing has urged the filmmakers to immediately produce a Marathi-dubbed version and organise a fresh theatrical release across Maharashtra.

The film’s makers have not issued an official response to the letter at the time of going to press.

Ramayana and Marathi, a dream collab Noorulain Sayed As the chatter surrounding Nitesh Tiwari’s Ramayana being dubbed in Marathi gains momentum, we couldn’t stop ourselves from doing a little scouring online. The search had a sole goal, to find out if there ever had been a Marathi film or TV adaptation of the Ramayana. To our sheer chagrin, there has not been a single instance when this epic saga, which is the soul of Hindu religion, has been adapted in Marathi. 

However, Ramanand Sagar’s legendary show has been dubbed in the language and was released on a TV channel in June 2020. We guess, this might be a slight treat for fans of both the language and the show. Can the heavyweights of the Marathi film industry grant ardent fans this dream collab of a fabulous language and iconic mythological saga?